Conceptualising ‘Digital Academic Orphanhood’: Marginalised Distance Learners and the Hidden Curriculum of Open and Distance e-Learning (ODeL)

Despite expanded access to technology, many African Open and Distance e-Learning (ODeL) students remain underserved by institutional support structures. Existing frameworks, including digital divide, academic integration, and hidden curriculum theories, do not fully account for learners who are formally enrolled and digitally connected yet remain relationally and culturally excluded from the informal networks essential for academic success. This paper introduces Digital Academic Orphanhood as a new conceptual framework addressing this gap. The concept is derived through Walker and Avant's (2019) eight-step systematic concept analysis, enriched by critical postcolonial and Afrocentric analytical lenses, and validated through structured consultation with six African ODeL scholars and practitioners from six countries. The framework proposes three interrelated dimensions: structural orphanhood (the absence of institutional support mechanisms), relational orphanhood (insufficient mentoring and peer networks), and cultural orphanhood (epistemological misalignment). Five defining attributes emerge from inductive analysis of 47 empirical studies: formal inclusion with relational exclusion; absence of academic nurturing; limited tacit institutional knowledge; cultural-epistemological disconnect; and compound vulnerability from intersecting disadvantages. The paper highlights invisible barriers operating through digital environments, including language norms, assumptions of digital fluency, and tensions between Western ODeL designs and communal African learning traditions, and integrates social capital, hidden curriculum, digital divide, and decolonial theories. The framework's originality lies in integrating structural, relational, and cultural dimensions within a postcolonial-Afrocentric orientation specifically focused on digital learning contexts, a combination absent from existing constructs. The paper contributes theoretically and practically by guiding inclusive pedagogy, institutional accountability, and diagnostic instrument development, and points toward participatory, longitudinal, and intervention research to advance justice in digital higher education.